We love parks, gardens and open spaces and we are committed to making sure they are appreciated, understood and cared for so that everyone has the chance to enjoy them.

The Parks Agency was set up by two of the best-known and experienced individuals in the parks world, to champion good design and management of parks and to promote the benefits they bring, through consultancy work, public advocacy and campaigning. Since it was established in 2002 it has been closely involved in the development of parks policy, lobbying to protect parks and to raise awareness of their importance, as well as having hand-on experience of over a hundred park restoration projects through its work with the Heritage Lottery Fund and directly for local authority-owners.

As well as our own unrivalled experience in, and commitment to, the repair, restoration, enhancement and management of parks we have access to the skills of a wide range of other leading practitioners in the field and in complementary disciplines.

Crap Parks, back by popular demand, can be found under Gallery above, along with the celebratory Great Parks.

To mark the demise earlier this year of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Parks for People programme, we thought we would publish an account of its early history, when it was the Urban Parks Programme, written for the HLF in 2002. We hope readers, and future historians of the urban parks renaissance, will find it a useful account of the dawn of that renaissance. To view the report, click here